Is it just the Arabs that we don’t like, or perhaps just some Arabs?

 I am not sure when I have heard so much cant and hypocrisy over anything as the hot air and virtue signalling that is taking place over the Football World Cup which is taking place in Qatar. Let me begin by making my position clear.

 

It should not be taking place in Qatar. 

 

There is no doubt in my mind that it is only as a result of industrial scale bribery and corruption that it is taking place in such a hot country in the middle of the football season in many leagues across the world. There is also no doubt that several thousand people died constructing the stadia and that the living conditions of the construction workers was and is appalling.

However, the argument now seems to be focussed on the treatment of those who are LGBT+. We seem to be quite happy to deal “normally” with other countries whose position on LGBT+ is similar to Qatar. According to Human Rights Watch, as reported on the BBC website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43822234 , there are 69 countries that have repressive LGBT+ legislation. These include many African countries and some Asian and other countries. We seem quite happy to play Pakistan at cricket and LGBT+ legislation doesn’t get a mention.

 

Some American states still have anti-gay legislation on their statue books. The US Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional although one Supreme Court Justice has said that the ruling should be looked at again!

 

So why are we so “hot & bothered” about the LGBT+ issues at this event, whilst we let other events pass by without notice? COP27 has just taken place in Eygpt. Contemporary Egyptian law does not explicitly criminalize same-sex sexual acts. Instead, the state uses several morality provisions for the de facto criminalization of homosexual conduct. Any behaviour, or the expression of any idea that is deemed to be immoral, scandalous or offensive to the teachings of a recognized religious leader may be prosecuted using these provisions. These public morality and public order laws have been used against LGBT people, in addition to the supporters of LGBT-reform.

Perhaps it is just some Arabs that we don't like?

Constitutional Monarchy - Time for a Change?

Following the death of Her Queen Elizabeth and the accession to the throne of her son Charles there have been calls, in some quarters, that an hereditary monarchy, albeit a Constitutional Monarchy, is an anachronism in the 21st century and should be replaced  by an elected president. Some  calls, such as that from the Irish hobgoblins known as Jedward are frankly risible. Then there are the demented ravings from some North American harpies. Some are more reasoned and deserve some careful thought; but what I have not seen is a comprehensive proposal suggesting what alternative form of government is proposed. It is as if we simply replace the hereditary monarchy with an elected president and keep everything else the same. Yet if events of the last few days have shown us anything they have shown how the monarchy is woven into the fabric of our parliamentary democracy. You cannot simply change one part of it without having to change how the rest of it works.

There are some key questions that need answering. Do we go for something like the American system where the president is all powerful or a symbolic head of state as in Ireland?

If a symbolic head of state then how are they chosen? (Personally I would exclude any person who has held elected pubic office). If we go with an elected all powerful president is the election for her/him held at the same time as parliamentary elections? What happens if we get a Labour President and a Conservative House of Commons (or vice-versa)? If we have an elected Head of State logic would dictate that the House of Lords should be an elected body not based on hereditary peerages and the munificence of the prime minister. When would these elections be held? Should the whole of the House of Lords be elected in one fell swoop or say one third every two years? What power would they hold over the HofC?

If my memory is correct despite most Australians favouring repulicanism the last Australian referendum on who should be head of state instead of the Queen/King fell because they could not agree on an alternative. 

There will probably only be one chance to change things in my lifetime (aged 75 next birthday) so whatever is proposed needs to be well detailed and well thought out. I shall not be holding my breath

The times they are a changin'

 Since I last posted we have had the resignation of Prime Minister Johnson. The unedifying spectacle of a seven week campaign for the Conservative Party to elect a new leader. The queen appointing Liz Truss as Prime Minister followed swiftly by the demise of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Charles, Prince of Wales appointed King Charles III. 

As a country we now await the funeral of the late Queen and, no doubt in about a year or so, the coronation of the King. Meanwhile we in the midst of a major energy crisis, a cost of living crisis, an environmental crisis and the "non-war" in Ukraine rumbles on.

I am not sure how many shopping days until Christmas, but I suspect that it will be bleak for many.

Rugby is Doomed

I love the game, spent many happy hours playing it, some not so happy hours in A&E, and even more very happy hours in the bar talking about it!!! The older I get the better I was, although truth be told I wasn't that good. But I loved playing it, as did thousands of others, and we all have a bond of friendship whenever we meet irrespective of our actual standard of play.

So why do I say that the game is doomed? This article, to me sums up all that is wrong with the game. It talks about attracting spectators, trying to attract increaed funding. I would rather they focussed on attracting more players. Of filling the void by schools not playing the game. I would like others to have the same fun that I had. But the administrators of the sport seem to have abandoned the grass roots game.

Personally I think that the sport is losing out by this relentless focus on the top level. Sport is to be played not to be used as a money making machine.

I guess that I am just an old has-been stuck in a time-warp hankering after the "good old days". Still I cannot help but feel that young people are missing out on something that was good - I am simply glad that I was a part of it.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jul/12/rugby-cannot-overlook-contact-issues-and-stoppages-undermining-game

Is Racism still alive and kicking in the UK?

Taking my life into my hands - Would Sir Mo Farah have been treated the same if he had been Joe Ordinary from Somalia?

What happened to him was awful, horrendous, we do not have words to describe what he went through.

The sad reality is that thousands endured the same horror as he did, but I sady suspect that they wee treated differently once the facts were known!

Reflection from a year or so go that is still relevant

Apart from being engulfed by the CV-19 pandemic we are now caught in the maelstrom of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and all the protests initially caused by the murder of (black) George Floyd by a (white) policeman Derek Chauvin. The protest movement appears to have taken on a life of its own and in a few instances has been subverted by people more interested in rioting and looting than by those trying to right a great wrong.

Nevertheless the vast majority of the protesters are focussed on righting the wrongs of the past and those that are still happening today in many (all?) countries across the globe.

One of the symbols of the protests has been focussed on removing statues and place/street names honouring people who were slave traders. It has been pointed out that some of the slavers did many philanthropic acts; this is countered by so did Jimmy Savile but we don't erect statues to him. It should of course be pointed out that what Jimmy Savile was illegal whereas slavery was, at that time legal (still abhorrent and an affront to any decent human being). Slavery might now be illegal but if anyone believes that it is abolished they have not being paying attention to events around the globe.

So this leads onto the question of should we judge the past by the standards of today? There are thousands if not millions of people who were punished for committing acts that were illegal at the time but which are legal today. Homosexual acts spring to mind; over the centuries may people were imprisoned for carrying out these. Some have been posthumously pardoned, Alan Turing springs to mind. He did break the law and was cruelly punished. Should he have been and should all the others that were similarly barbarically treated be pardoned? They knew that what they were doing was illegal at that time and were caught and punished. In some cases the cruel incarceration gave rise to great art, De Profundis and the Ballad of Reading Gaol are two works by Oscar Wilde that spring to mind.

Many people were transported to Australia for committing acts that today would warrant no more than a slap on the wrist at the local magistrates court. Turing and some 50,000 others including Wilde have been pardoned, but this doesn't ease the pain and degradation that they suffered at the time.

Cecil Rhodes is now coming under attack and there are increasing cries for his statue to be removed from where is is sited in Oxford. Oriel College decided not to remove the statue in High Street in 2016 and said the figure "was a reminder of the complexity of history and of the legacies of colonialism".What will happen today is anyones guess, although if I were a betting man I would bet that it will be removed.

So how should we judge the past and how we should we teach it? How many today are taught about the Tolpuddle Martyrs? Their great bravery helped lay down the foundations of the trade union movement and the great reforms in working practices that are still prevalent today, although under constant threat. The present is built on the past for good or ill. We most certainly should not forget it or else we will be destined to repeat it.

Why we played (Rugby that is)

 When the battle scars have faded

And the truth becomes a lie

And the weekend smell of liniment

Could almost make you cry.

When the last rucks well behind you

And the man that ran now walks

It doesn’t matter who you are

The mirror sometimes talks

Have a good hard look old son!

The melons not that great

The snoz that takes a sharp turn sideways

Used to be dead straight

You’re an advert for arthritis

You’re a thoroughbred gone lame

Then you ask yourself the question

Why the hell you played the game?

Was there logic in the head knocks?

In the corks and in the cuts?

Did common sense get pushed aside?

By manliness and guts?

Do you sometimes sit and wonder

Why your time would often pass

In a tangled mess of bodies

With your head up someone’s......?

With a thumb hooked up your nostril

Scratching gently on your brain

And an overgrown Neanderthal

Rejoicing in your pain!

Mate – you must recall the jersey

That was shredded into rags

Then the soothing sting of Dettol

On a back engraved with tags!

It’s almost worth admitting

Though with some degree of shame

That your wife was right in asking

Why the hell you played the game?

Why you’d always rock home legless

Like a cow on roller skates

After drinking at the clubhouse

With your low down drunken mates

Then you’d wake up – check your wallet

Not a solitary coin

Drink Berocca by the bucket

Throw an ice pack on your groin

Copping Sunday morning sermons

About boozers being losers

While you limped like Quasimodo

With a half a thousand bruises!

Yes – an urge to hug the porcelain

And curse Sambuca’s name

Would always pose the question

Why the hell you played the game!

And yet with every wound re-opened

As you grimly reminisce it

Comes the most compelling feeling yet

God, you bloody miss it!

From the first time that you laced a boot

And tightened every stud

That virus known as rugby

Has been living in your blood

When you dreamt it when you played it

All the rest took second fiddle

Now you’re standing on the sideline

But your hearts still in the middle

And no matter where you travel

You can take it as expected

There will always be a breed of people

Hopelessly infected

If there’s a teammate, then you’ll find him

Like a gravitating force

With a common understanding

And a beer or three, of course

And as you stand there telling lies

Like it was yesterday old friend

You’ll know that if you had the chance

You’d do it all again

You see – that’s the thing with rugby

It will always be the same

And that, I guarantee

Is why the hell you played the game!

By Rupert McCall

Credit: Sutton & Epsom Bs

The Prime Minister must go

     The number of times that we have changed PM during wars:

                                                            

and these were wars in which we were fighting rather than supporting.

Freedom

 One old lady wants to go outside. Her cries grow ever more plaintive: “I need some fresh air, help me.” Then, more urgently: “I’m dying! Let me out!” The carers are endlessly patient: “We’re doing the medicine round, Edna. You’ll have to wait a minute.” She’s just been out for a cigarette, but is restless again.

I reflect that this will be me, if I end up in a care home. Driven mad by the sweltering rooms, frustrated by the combination lock on the door. Just before I leave, Edna is taken outside in a wheelchair and I pass her on the patio sitting alone, clattering a table to be let back in. She doesn’t want to be inside or outside. She wants the freedom, which infirmity has stolen, to choose.

What has happened to Putin?

 What has happened to Putin? Why has he flipped? The major question of the day is how can he withdraw Russian forces without losing his job/head?

Both Sir John Sawyers, former head of MI6 and Donald Trump who met Putin on several occasions agree that he has changed from a strong, rational leader with a deep sense of Russia and its proper place in the world to an irrational leader doing very strange things. It is reported that Tump thought that the massing of Russian forces on the Ukrainian border was a negotiating tactic and one that he could see the sense of.

Something within Putin has changed over the last two years; what is it? We need to understand Putin so that he can be persuaded to withdraw his forces whilst appearing to have gained something.

If he cannot do that then he will say and more and more innocent lives on both sides will be wasted.

What happens to former dictators? Where does Putin go?

The reason for asking this is that sooner or later, and I hope that it is sooner,  we have to start thinking about the end-game of the war in the Ukraine. From what I have read Putin is stubborn and can be brutal. He will not voluntarily give up on the course of action that he has started. I suspect that currently the chances of a "palace coup" in Russia and replacing him are very slim; particularly if he feels that he has no where to go, no escape route apart from death.

In the seventies I took a Diploma in Management Studies. I still remember the module on negotiations. One of the key points was to see things through the eyes of the people that you were negotiating with and to leave them with some "wiggle room" so that they have a positive view of the end result. As a supplier you can screw a customer just the once, as he will never come back. Work out a settlement that he is happy with and you have repeat business. Similarly from the customers perspective if you have a good supplier who makes what your business needs you want the supplier to remain in business to keep on supplying you.

What does Putin really want? If we do not understand this we have no hope of any settlement. I am not saying give him what he wants, but we need to understand what motivated him to start the conflict. If the conflict does not end in some form of negotiated settlement then there are, as I see it three possible outcomes:

1. Putin keeps shelling and bombing Ukraine and its cities until they are completely uninhabitable. Then he takes them in a somewhat Pyrrhic victory.
2. The war keeps going for many years with the Ukrainians/Russians living in a state pf perpetual conflict.
3. We slowly but surely drift into a major global conflict that engulfs us all.

There are some that say that World War 2 was a result of the punitive damages that were imposed on Germany at the end of the First War. Somehow Putin has to be persuaded that ending the conflict is in his best interests, that he has a way out. A mighty difficult task but if we do not succeed we are doomed to years of conflict and suffering.

Request from the Chief Rabbi in the Ukraine

 The Chief Rabbi of Ukraine has asked for Christians to recite the following verses of Psalm 31 aloud.

Psalm 31 21-24

21 Praise be to the Lord, for he showed me the wonders of his love when I was in a city under siege.

22 In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from your sight!” Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help.

23 Love the Lord, all his faithful people! The Lord preserves those who are true to him, but the proud he repays in full.

24. Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.

Firstly many, many congratulations  to the ladies and mens curling teams on their medals at the Winter Olympics. A fitting reward for all the many years of hard-work that they put in.

Then of course there are all those athletes in other sports who put in just as much for no reward other than the satisfaction of being an "Olympian",

But does top sport matter? Vast sums of money are poured into elite sporting programmes yet at the grass-roots level many sports, particularly team sports are withering on the vine.

What is the function and purpose of sport? Should public money (or lottery money) be spent on developing elite sport programmes or should it be spent on boosting the lower levels?

Personally I love sport, I used to be very active in rugby and then running, albeit very much at "Club level". I enjoy watching it but so few today seem to be taking it up. Today there are lots watching but few playing - why?

A Rakes Progress

 Yesterday Julia and I went to Tate Britain to see the Hogarth exhibition. I was familiar with some of his prints but had not realised that a great deal of his work was in oils.

What was fascinating was to see his series of paintings "A Rake's Progress". The series shows the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, the spendthrift son and heir of a rich merchant, who comes to London, wastes all his money on luxurious living, prostitution and gambling, and as a consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam).

What struck a chord was that what led to Tom's destruction was trying to play "above his league". He wanted to emulate the really rich and although wealthy was not "seriously rich". It struck me that this series of paintings captured the fall of Prince Andrew - he is/was wealthy, but he could not hope to emulate the seriously rich that he met thanks to being the sovereign's son.

It seems to me that Prince Andrew was captivated by the seriously rich and would do all in his power to be "one of them" except that he didn't have the largesse and so was beholden to them and fell in with them and immoral ways.

If you get a chance go and see the exhibition - a morality story for our times.

Don't kick the cat

 Everyone is, rightly, up in arms about Zouma and the cat kicking. However they will ignore reports that more than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, that the Guardian has revealed.

They ignore the appalling human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia to gleefully accept the millions that they are pouring into Newcastle United. Not to mention the Winter Olympics being held in China with it appalling record of human rights violations. China has detained Uighurs at camps in the north-west region of Xinjiang, where allegations of torture, forced labour and sexual abuse have emerged. I suppose that as they are mainly Muslim they don't really count?

But kick a cat and you are beyond the pale. 

Top sport in its pursuit of money has long sold its soul, as long as you don't kick a cat!

Are banks responsible?

 If I am scammed, that is willingly move my money to another account when asked to why, should the bank(s) reimburse me if the issue was fraudulent?

If I buy something from a person selling stuff out of a suitcase and it turns out to be fake I have lost my money! There will be no recompense, not that I would expect it. So why should scams involving banks be treated differently?

I never cease to wonder

 Why would anyone, least of all the prime minister’s principal private secretary, apparently send an email to 100 people marked, “Official. Sensitive. No 10 ONLY”, inviting them to “socially distanced drinks!” to “make the most of the lovely weather” and not stop to ask: “Is it a bit dumb to put this in writing?” This, after all, was in May 2020 when it was barely legal to lower your bum on to an empty park bench. Fifty-five minutes after Oliver Dowden made a speech telling the public that they could only meet one person outside their household in a public space, the sausage rolls and wine glasses were being laid out at No 10. If I was Martin Reynolds, I wouldn’t expect to be recruited by MI6 any time soon. I don’t think we’ve found the new James Bond. He might as well have headed it: “Sssshhh. Top-secret naughtypoos”. It almost makes me suspect we might not be being led by the “brightest and the best” after all.

Living in Interesting Times

 "Nobody told me that it broke the rules", this is Mr Johnson's plantiff cry in many of today's newspapers in response to questions on the "event" that he attended. So our Prime Minister, who gave multiple press conferences telling us to keep to the "rules" is now telling us that he didn't know what they were.

We have Dominic Raab saying "People were working extremely long hours, so it doesn’t surprise me if people, as you see in other walks of life, had a glass of wine or beer at the end of a very long week," he explained. I do not recall seeing much evidence of this taking place in hospitals or care homes. rather we saw pictures of medical staff grapping some sleep whilst sat on the floor. Stories of staff volunteering to be "locked in" Care Homes so that they could continue serving residents without the risk of travelling to/from their homes and spreading the disease.

Sir Austen Chamberlain,father of Neville Chamberlain, addressing the annual meeting of Birmingham Unionist Association , spoke of the “grave injury” to collective security by Germany’s violation of the Treaty of Locarno. Sir Austen, who referred to himself as “a very old Parliamentarian,” said (in March 1936):—

“It is not so long ago that a member of the Diplomatic Body in London, who had spent some years of his service in China, told me that there was a Chinese curse which took the form of saying, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ There is no doubt that the curse has fallen on us.”

“We move from one crisis to another. We suffer one disturbance and shock after another.”

I really despair of the quality of the leadership of this country. What is worse I am not convinced that it is much better on the other side of The House. We certainly are living in interesting times.